Rollover accident results in OUI arrest

SUNDERLAND — Police charged a Turners Falls man with driving drunk after they allege he flipped and abandoned his mother’s car.

According to a release from Brenda Tozloski of the Sunderland Police Department, officers were dispatched to a roll-over accident Friday at approximately 10 p.m., and came across a red 1999 Hyundai Elantra on the right side of Bull Hill Road, just off of Route 116.

The car was on its roof, lights on, with the passenger side and rear windows blown out. There was no one with the vehicle but the exhaust pipe was still hot to the touch and one officer checked the area and found two males about six-tenths of a mile south on Route 116, walking toward Amherst.

“The (officer) noticed both were unsteady on their feet, swaying and had the odor of alcoholic beverage coming from their persons,” Tozloski wrote.

Once separated, one implicated the other as the driver, according to Tozloski.

Tozloski wrote police arrested Dylan Lapointe, 21, of Elm Street, Turners Falls, after he failed field sobriety tests, charging him with OUI liquor, operating to endanger, marked lanes violation and leaving the scene of property damage.

Lapointe initially denied he was driving the vehicle at the time of the crash, but later admitted he was driving and blamed the accident on the sand in the road.

Lapointe said he and his friend were coming from a bar in Amherst and headed to Snowzee’s bar in Sunderland, according to police.